by Gavin Reese
Williams took the cue and spoke over the rising din. “We know this is not the cut-and-dried, pretty-little-bow, silver-platter case that we normally take from local LEOs, but the circumstances and urgency surrounding this investigation are forcing our hand.
“D-E-A Phoenix is committed to seeing this thing through, and I know it sounds like Dry Creek P-D is asking for your help, but the reality is that D-E-A is really the one asking for help right now. We have very little time to work this thing up, and we need to make the most efficient use of that time by delegating various aspects of this investigation. I need to know if you and your bosses are in or out, right now, no bullshit. If you think there’s too much liability, go ahead and leave now. Sign the nondisclosure form on your way out, and give us space to run this down. Whatever your decision, make it now and commit to it, ‘cuz we’re behind the eight ball and we gotta make up significant time on this.” Williams leaned back in his seat.
Alex watched the agents’ respective reactions and tried to guess how many would remain once a single bellwether led the frightened flock out. To his pleasant and unexpected surprise, not a soul left. Seemingly committed by something akin to mob rule, it appeared no one had the guts to admit fear. The agents had steeled themselves with one another, as though somehow confident their collective involvement lessened their individual liability.
“Where do you want us to start?” BATFE Special Agent Healy had already pledged his support to Williams and Landon, but now did so in front of his peers, as though asking the single question on everyone’s mind.
Fifty-Nine
Duke’s residence. Maricopa County, Arizona.
Jonathan watched Duke’s property for most of the afternoon, having been parked on the west side of Sunvalley Parkway so long he feared the hazard lights might drain the car’s battery. Aside from the dilapidated mobile home, he identified several quasi-concealed storage sheds scattered around the property. Jonathan assumed the white male driver, whom he had taken to calling “Adolf,” had devoted a lot of time and effort to conceal the sheds while keeping them easily accessible.
Determined to take a look through the sheds himself, Jonathan decided to do so that night. No reason to wait any longer. After a brief struggle, the depleted battery managed to turn the ignition over, and he drove back to his mother’s house to prep. Jonathan intentionally donned mismatched BDUs of differing camo patterns, loaded up some of his sniper kit, and performed a quick clean-and-oil on the liberated Dragunov. Can’t risk a malfunction tonight, he thought. While reassembling the sniper rifle, Jonathan felt a sudden and unusual desire to pray. He chuckled at the old, familiar need, which had once been part of his daily ritual before leading his men outside the wire. Alone in the overheated garage, Jonathan bowed his head and recited his prayer from memory:
Saint Michael, the Arc Angel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, By the Divine Power of God, cast into Hell, Satan and all the evil spirits, who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen
Jonathan’s head and heart were a volatile mix of varied emotions as he wiped not-yet-fallen tears from his eyes. He’d succeeded in talking with Colleen and Michael that afternoon, but had only been able to leave messages for Detective Landon. Despite the potential consequences of his intended actions that night, Jonathan believed he couldn’t risk any further delay in determining “Adolf’s” involvement with The Chosen Few, his potential possession of the stolen manual, and intent to use it against innocent civilians. He forcibly swallowed his emotions and buried each of them back into their isolated mental compartments until only steeled tenacity remained in their place. He had to continue pursuing “Adolf” and his friends, even if Landon could not officially sanction his efforts and chose to turn a blind eye to them.
As dusk faded into darkness, Jonathan returned to Sunvalley Parkway and another night of silty desert surveillance. This time, he parked the sedan on an isolated dirt access road a mile south of “Adolf’s” driveway. As long as the man had complied with his assessed property lines, Jonathan knew his land didn’t extend that far south. Any threats can, therefore, only lie to my north.
A strength-draining mix of crawling, trekking, and kneeling carried Jonathan toward “Adolf’s” southernmost shed while the still, hundred-degree desert night eroded his endurance. After spending thirty minutes scanning for countermeasures or an opposing force, Jonathan slowly crawled forward toward the shed’s open front entrance. Understanding that threshold represented the legal dichotomy between misdemeanor and felony trespassing, Jonathan also knew it could be the difference between “Adolf” running him off or shooting on sight. Quelling rising, adrenaline-fueled anxiety as he had done at many such thresholds before, Jonathan crawled on until he reached the shed’s front corner. He brought his left leg up and rose to a kneeling position, kept his right knee grounded, and raised his rifle up to ‘low-ready’ to scan the area one last time before making entry. Jonathan expected to lose almost all ability to detect approach upon entering the small structure, so he wanted to first reassure his solitude before crossing the open, darkened doorway. After silently kneeling for an estimated two minutes, based on the increasing pain in his right knee, he identified no proximal threats, rose to a crouch, and cautiously entered the shed.
Once inside, it seemed Jonathan had stepped into a low-power oven. The already-still night air became absolutely stifling inside the shed, and he began sweating even more profusely. He turned on a low-power flashlight, the lens of which he’d colored with a red marker for clandestine use; illuminated in the eerie, red glow and surrounded by dancing, black shadows, the scene struck Jonathan as decidedly sinister. Denying himself time to ponder the image before him, he deliberately moved to the small workbench. There, upon its rough, plywood top, laid the materialization of Jonathan’s fears. He recognized the crude, repurposed IED components for exactly what they were intended. Aging mechanical clocks, blasting caps, two analog cell phones with insulated wires protruding from the speakers, and several new sticks of trinitrotoluene sat alongside a stapled photocopy of the same Army manual Billy had stolen from his duffel bag. After finding no tripwires among the workbench items, Jonathan grabbed the stapled documents and soon found his handwritten notes copied in the margins. That mother fucker!
Enraged, Jonathan imagined swift and immediate revenge; his mind’s eye transported him across the darkened property to the trailer, where he imagined kicking in the front door and finding “Adolf” seated in a small, wood-paneled living room watching staticy, Nazi-themed porn on an old tube-projector TV. Jonathan saw his face, frozen in shock and fear, as dark crimson spilled from multiple entrance wounds to his chest, face, and head, further discoloring his dingy, sweat-stained shirt. Get some!
Jonathan brought his focus back to the immediate reality, the shed, and the photocopies in his hands. Considering his options and their possible outcomes, he reluctantly decided to leave the copied manual pages. The Chosen Few, thanks to Billy, apparently had the original document, and taking the copy would only risk elevating their paranoia and threat awareness without making actual progress to stop or hinder their plans. They could simply make another copy tomorrow, he surmised. He illuminated the manual in his flashlight’s red glow and took photographs with his cell phone, documenting the front cover and several internal pages to show his handwritten margin notes.
snap……snnnnap…snap
The nearby sound of breaking, dry desert tree branches invaded the shed and immediately revealed to Jonathan that he was no longer alone. He turned off the dim red flashlight and silently pivoted toward the open doorway to face whatever threat approached. Quietly treading laterally across the opening, he optimized his external field of view and reduced his exposure to any potential threats on the other side. Stopping mid-step as he neared the far side of the doorway, Jonathan saw a dark figure, a man,
meandering through the desert toward him, a rifle hanging from his right shoulder. He moved with relative silence, but seemingly without purpose or concern about the dry branches occasionally beneath his feet. Jonathan estimated the man stood within fifty yards of the shed, and fought a rising tide of sympathetic adrenaline. Given the relative brightness of the night sky, he knew had to leave soon, almost immediately, if he were to escape, but he paused briefly to debate his need to actually flee the shed. What if he doesn’t intend to come inside? No more than two seconds passed as Jonathan considered the consequences of his narrowing life-or-death options, but the slight delay allowed just enough time for the armed figure to move inside the last row of bushes that would have offered Jonathan concealment to quietly crawl away.
Now effectively trapped, the shed offered potential salvation only if Jonathan stayed hidden and undetected while the figure passed by. Exiting the threshold would certainly initiate a gunfight he both wished to avoid and may not survive. Preemptively shooting him on his own property constituted murder in every sense of the word, Jonathan reminded himself, despite the public service of dealing his death.
snAP…swishswish……crUNCH…snap…
The sounds of the man’s apparently careless stumbling grew louder with each passing step. Jonathan’s heart rate and blood pressure increased as his sympathetic nervous system further initiated his ancestral “fight-or-flight” response, and he consciously initiated countermeasures to stay under the ideal performance limit of 145 beats-per-minute.
Positioned mere feet inside the shed, Jonathan held his rifle’s flash suppressor only a few inches within its threshold as he maintained the Dragunov in a tight, high-ready position. Afraid the creaky plywood floor would betray a backward retreat deeper into the structure, he felt forced to remain closer to the doorway than he would have liked. Moonlight cast the shed’s shadow out toward the approaching figure, which helped conceal and darken Jonathan’s position.
Although he prayed for God to help him avoid a gunfight, Jonathan knew he had to immediately formulate a viable plan to improve his probability of surviving one, especially in the confined space of the shed-coffin. He tacitly exchanged the red-lens flashlight for a larger, high-lumen flashlight from his left cargo pants pocket. Pressing the body of the powerful flashlight against the left side of the rifle’s rubberized forend with his left hand, he tucked the Dragunov deeper into the crease of his right shoulder, which was farthest from the open doorway and his adversary’s potential, imminent reach. His left index finger rested on the flashlight’s side switch just below the cap; if the figure moved to enter the shed, Jonathan intended to quickly and momentarily project the light’s nine-hundred lumens forward into the man’s face. The brief flash would surprise, blind, and disorient him, and the immediately returning darkness would permit Jonathan to move, unseen, to his right and, maybe, out of the shed. Jonathan hoped any rounds the man subsequently fired would land at his last known location inside the shed, rather than within the space he intended to occupy by the time that actually happened. Once the man chose to engage him with lethal force for shining a flashlight in his face, Jonathan had no moral quandary about using such force himself. Even the most conservative Rules of Engagement would not require him to eat unreturned gunfire.
The Dragunov’s large 7.62x54 ammunition, the rough equivalent of a .308-caliber rifle round, remained lethal well past eight-hundred meters. At only a few feet, Jonathan knew the exceptionally-high energy from a single center-mass impact would immediately end any gunfight between them. He also knew it would be terrifying, deafening, and messy for both men. If it came to pass, Jonathan could survive, but fully expected to wear, and probably taste, the man’s spattered blood.
Having resolved his “if-then” courses of action, Jonathan lowered his combat stance, just a bit, to improve his speed and maneuverability in the small shed, and tried to slightly relax his arms and shoulders. He didn’t know how long he would have to stand, silent and in one place, before he could move again. Muscle fatigue would quickly become a deadly issue if he held a tight and uncomfortable stance. Sweat accumulated and ran down his face, and its salt stung his eyes while Jonathan watched the man move closer, now partially concealed by the wall immediately right of the open doorway. The stranger had navigated around a moderate clump of bushes and showed no awareness of Jonathan’s presence.
crunch…schhwck schhwck schhwck schhwck
Having spent a substantial portion of his youth navigating the Arizona desert, Jonathan recognized the sound of the approaching footsteps falling on the rough topsoil; the sand here had more in common with a gravel quarry than with the soft silt of California’s shoreline or Iraq’s invasive, overheated grit. Jonathan expected the man, still inbound from his right, now stood no more than a few feet outside the doorway. Despite the accuracy of his belief, the sudden, quiet appearance there surprised him.
In a fraction of that first second, Jonathan both raised his rifle to place its front sight over the figure’s upper torso and realized the man had turned away from him and the shed to face the open desert. From only a few feet away, Jonathan’s muzzle covered the back of the man’s beating heart while he assessed the situation. His own heart rate and blood pressure suddenly and dramatically elevated, but had not yet escalated beyond control. Jonathan reined them back in while he watched the man bring a lit cigar up to his face and take a long, deep drag. He realized the man’s facial features appeared similar to Cleveland’s associate from gun shop, but his hair, posture, and the scoped scout rifle slung on his right shoulder were all new. I can’t tell if it’s the same fucker or not.
Because Jonathan’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, light from the man’s burning cigar perceptibly brightened the shed’s interior and ominously cast the man’s shadow over him. Jonathan saw the embers burned nearly down to the man’s fingers, and felt grateful the reckless adversary had ruined his own night vision. He’s been sucking on that for a long time, Jonathan thought, just as he smelled a slight, sweet odor of bourbon. Love to know what you’re celebrating tonight.
The man loudly sighed, then slowly grabbed for the rifle…
No, no, no! Jonathan willed him to stop as the metallic taste of adrenaline hit his tongue and he maintained the rifle directly over the back of the man’s heart, prepared to violently explode his chest at the first indication of a threat.
The man carefully unslung the heavy-caliber rifle from his right shoulder, as though it ached under the gun’s weight, and briefly held it by the forend in his right hand.
Set it down, fucker, set it down! Stay away from the trigger!
Slowly, as though the muscles in his back had stiffened, he set the rifle’s butt on the ground to his right, and propped its muzzle up against the right side of the open doorway. Still apparently unaware of Jonathan’s presence, the man leaned against the doorway’s left side.
Jonathan allowed himself to relax, and slowly exhaled a long, silent breath. Thank God, that was about to get terrible for me, and much worse for him. Several long minutes passed while he leaned and smoked, listening and watching the surrounding desert while Jonathan watched him. Lowering the rifle slightly, Jonathan held a low-ready position and tried to relax as much as possible. It seemed his prayers might be answered and the gunfight he’d thought unavoidable would be, as long as he stayed hidden.
With the man separated from his only known weapon, Jonathan estimated the distance between him and the grounded rifle, as well as his bourbon-delayed reaction time, and planned non-lethal action to further separate the two should Jonathan’s presence become breaking news. His combat-ready stance would allow Jonathan to introduce the ball of his right foot onto the small of the man’s back without winding up and he predicted that a heavy, door-busting kick would easily cast the man five or six feet out into the desert night before he could regain control of himself. Having established this alternate action plan, Jonathan smirked at the idea that his adversary stood only a f
raction of a second from roughly belly-flopping onto the jagged desert floor. Sweat now rolled down Jonathan’s brow as he stood, effectively coiled, watching for imminent danger. Breath slow and silent, slow and silent.
In contrast to Jonathan’s internal pre-combat anxiety, the man before him haphazardly finished off the last bit of his cigar, lazily cast its smoldering remnants onto the uneven, rocky terrain a few feet in front of him, and slowly exhaled a smoke-filled breath. He coughed hard, three times, forcibly expelled phlegm out into the desert, and farmer-snotted once out of each nostril. Seems like the coffin nails’ll kill him if nobody else gets the chance. Accumulated sweat now ran, almost continuously, down Jonathan’s face, forearms, and hands while he held the Dragunov’s weight out in front of his body. He watched the man casually remove a case from his right cargo pants pocket, retrieve a new cigar, and bite the end off. As though still unaware of the trespasser and in no particular hurry, he spat the wrapper and tobacco debris along the same trajectory as his phlegm and lethargically produced a Zippo lighter from his right front pants pocket. Jonathan tried to preserve his night vision by leaning his upper body slightly left behind the center of the man’s torso, partially closing his eyelids, and looking down at the man’s buttocks. Surrounded by the otherwise nearly silent desert, he heard the lighter’s coarse wheel collide with adjacent flint and ignite its wick. The subsequent flame consumed pieces of the wrapped tobacco as the man puffed, hard and deep, to light his cigar.
In his peripheral vision, Jonathan saw the shadow of his own right leg stretch back across the shed’s floor. He reasonably feared light from the Zippo’s flame would betray him or the Dragunov, but he could not risk shifting his weight, or moving the rifle and risking some reflected glint off its steel. Anxious seconds seemed as minutes as Jonathan internally commanded the man to snuff his lighter. Just as suddenly as it had repelled the night, the extinguished lighter allowed its immediate return. Jonathan felt only minor relief when his again fully-opened eyes returned to the man’s back and shoulders, which provided much greater indication of an enemy’s actions and intent than his ass.